an accomplished young lady, but a young lady like a Canadian young lady and a fellow was a fool if he did not arrange to take her out quick before the other fellows. But there was nothing in it but just that triumph. “I’ll get a silk hat before Sunday”; he would prepare for her to go all the way down to the Albert Hall as a young lady being taken to a concert; the Albert Hall on Sunday was brass bands; he thought they were a concert. His world was thin and open; but the swift sunlit decision and freedom of his innocent reception of her in his bedroom lifted the dingy brown house of her long memories into a new background. She was to be fêted, in an assumed character and whether she liked it or no. The four strange men in the little back sitting-room were her competing friends, the friends of all nice young ladies. He was the one who had laughed the laugh she had heard in the hall, of course. They never appeared but somehow they had got to know of her and had their curious baseless set ways of thinking and talking about her. Being doctors and still students they ought to be the most hateful and awful kind of men in relation to women, thinking and believing all the horrors of medical science; the hundred golden rules of gynæcology; if they had been Englishmen they would have gone about making one want to murder them; but they did not; Dr. Hurd was studying gyn’kahl’jy, but he did not apply its ugly lies to life; to Canadians women were people … but they were all the same people to Dr. Hurd.
That evening both Dr. Heber and Dr. Hurd appeared at dinner. Mrs. Bailey tumultuously arranged them opposite each other to her right and left. Miriam could not believe they were going to stay until they sat down. She retreated to the far end of the table taking her place on Sissie’s right hand, separated from Dr. von Heber by the thin Norwegian and the protruding bulk of Mrs. Barrow. Mr. Mendizabal with a pencil and paper at the side of his plate was squarely opposite to her. His méfiant sallies to the accompaniment of Sissie’s giggles and Miss Strong’s rapid sarcastic remarks, made a tumult hiding her silence. She heard nothing of the various conversations sprouting easily all round the table. The